Finding Neverland: An invitation to the child in you
i know it’s been quite some time now i have done the crime of abandoning my blog. i felt deep sorry. not to anyone particular actually, but rather to myself and the pitiful realization of my commitment to write a blog every single time periodically. i felt helpless with inconsistencies i cannot avoid.
right now, i would like to talk about a film. i had rather many engagement of movie-going this past week, particularly due to the coming of Jiffest days. i had a lot of enjoyment watching them. i felt many times that i want to write something about them. but i simply haven’t the time, among other things that is (one of them is my rather naive idealism that rounds in the worry i had of the amount of time had to be wasted in order to write, which of course it’s far from absolutely correlated).
but the film which triggers this writing, which is in indeed on the last day of Jiffest, is a film about children most definitely. it is played brilliantly by Johnny Depp, adorned by the screen-glittening Kate Winslet, and enlivened beautifully by scores of children and children and children and children and their most beautiful innocence. It’s name is Finding Neverland. And i’ve rarely been so touched.
Watching Finding Neverland, i have unconsciously been swooped away pieces by pieces into an air of lightness, pleasantry, happiness. I found myself dropping a tiny tinkle of tears every now and them, even if it more often manifest itself only in form of a weight on the chest. It was exactly the sort of catharsis i am looking for, now and then, that feeds the truly inner libra-esq-ness i am born with.
Finding Neverland is about writing yes. it’s about innocence of the children yes. it’s about powerful dialogues about love and family yes. it’s about that soft English manner and amicability yes. and it’s about so many other things i can’t even began to expound without starting to sound too much.
The story tells about JM Barrie, notably the writer and playwright of Peter Pan, who finds that the love and conflict of a little family of 1 mom and 4 children had truly ignited the whole story on which Peter Pan was based. And that was the review-esquely way to describe it. There’s more to it definitely, most definitely in fact, for i won’t find in myself such great an impression if it were just that.
JM Barrie found himself amazed with the four children. or more appropriately, he was in love in fact with these children. But it was not his love in fact that made Peter Pan. But it was his love and his writer-ly imagination, which never ceases to put forward imaginative, otherworldly, yet so familiar, scenario, that steams the engine room of his mind from which the innocence-invested Peter Pan tale would later prevail.
James Barrie take some pieces of these boys life to knit them to his own fabric of story. Meanwhile, Barrie deeper and deeper involved in the real tragedies that is occuring around and, later, in the family.
First the relationship between Barrie and the family, headed by Winslet, a widow mother of the four children, was hardly approved by their community. This gives particular strain more to Barrie, although the family suffers alienation too. Second, as the good children will bitterfully realize except little by little, their mother is very ill. Their mother hide this fact, and the children, some of them became far more mature than his age because of his realizing his mother concealment, suffers themselves from the fact that their mother hiding the illness from them. They felt belied, which is logical. There was one line from the film, said by Barrie to George, the oldest child: "in the last 30 second, the boy is gone.. he had turned into a man". This reflects the phychological strain that the boys endure in facing the bitter situation about their mother that in the process turned the boy from exceptionally poor-conditioned to be exceptionally matured. This transition of boy to man depicted in the film contains so much drama power and value and pregnant with beautiful, beautiful morale and dialogues, the nomination for the a true dramatic achievement will hardly come as a surprise. For myself, the opportunity this movie provides for a 2 hour of aspiring catharsis is downright worthy of any praise i am capable of summoning.
Not, in micro-inches, less importance, the film boasts the power of children more than any film i have watched this year. there was children of heaven, which made me deep in tears, there was life is beautiful, which also wet my handkerchief, but none had provide that child-like delight and happy feeling i experience when watching Neverland.
it was the laughter of the children that continually lives within us. When asked how he can fly, the gamine Peter said "you have to think of lovely, wonderful thoughts, and they lift you up in the air". truly this is something which is to be taken seriously only when you’re a children! but in fact that’s it..that’s Barrie’s point: to bring up that Eternal Child in you. the child that bears no burden about the world, the child that was riped with limitless imaginations, without the slightest bother about logic, and regulations and all those complexities that adults has to deal to, the losing of sickening boundaries, the drowning of the sense, now only of joy and innocence and happiness. it is quintessentially freedom which i see in children. and indeed it is freedom what i seek, and all human seek, in their short life in the world.
The movie also expounds memorable words, phrases. wise words. wise phrases. contemplative in its nature. "it’s only a play mother" said Peter, the 3rd child, of the play he had really really looking forward to see in the face of his ill mother. "boys should have never put to sleep because they will wake up one day older. next thing you know they will become too old".
The finale was not in any way less dramatic and engaging than the other. The powerful imagination bought to life by Barrie in the finalized play of Peter Pan was put as an inspiration for the 4 children, and especially Peter - from whom the name Peter adapted - to make remembrance to his own mother who by the end of the film passed away due to sickness. "She went to Neverland" Barrie said, "and you can visit her anytime you like. If you just go there yourself..". "how..?" Peter answers with dreary eyes. Barrie replied "by believing Peter.. just believe" channeling the spirit and the most encouragement the child badly need at the passing of his beloved mother.
Finding Neverland reminds me of stories from Hans Christian Andersen and all other children story tellers. Children storytellers will always be loved. The world would become much more gloomy and cold without them. I love Finding Neverland, i found comfort in the sweet and honest and hence, the powerful innocence of it. I will consistently look back to it whenever i want to feel the simplicity and good feeling, the true mathematics of love. I adore films like these. i will consistently wait for their alikes.
